


Awakenings

by dirtbagtrashcat



Series: Awakenings [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akira awoke to his true self to protect Ryuji, Awakening to your Persona is weirdly erotic huh?, But not in a frustrating homophobic way, Denial, Denial of Feelings, Fantasizing, Just the regular kind where it’s totally scary to have a crush, M/M, Obsession, Pining, Repression, Ryuji is definitely not in love with his best friend, Spoilers for Vanilla P5, fantasies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23571163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtbagtrashcat/pseuds/dirtbagtrashcat
Summary: "Awakening to your Persona… it’s like, self-actualization, right? The ability to look straight at yourself, unflinching. That’s why it’s always so personal. Ryuji’s friends, they called on their Personas to defend themselves from their abusers, or to avenge the people they loved most. Ann summoned Carmen to save her own ass from a rapist fuck. Goemon helped Yusuke to muster the strength to defy the only family he’d ever known. Haru and Milady teamed up on her own father, for fuck’s sake.Akira, though… Akira’s reason was Ryuji."[Ryuji can’t stop dreaming about watching Akira awaken to his Persona, and he’s not sure why. It’s probably nothing. No need to overthink it.]
Relationships: Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Persona 5 Protagonist/Sakamoto Ryuji
Series: Awakenings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1697557
Comments: 7
Kudos: 115





	Awakenings

Ryuji’s been thinking.

It’s not something he makes a habit of. “Don’t hurt yourself,” Ann might snicker, if he could ever talk to her about this stuff. He’d bark something hostile back at her, but she’s right, really. Ryuji knows what he’s good for. He’s a man of action! He’s more than happy to leave the deliberation to Akira and Makoto, and to step in when they need some good old-fashioned brute force. 

But Ryuji’s had the same dream every night for the past week, and at a certain point, a guy starts to wonder what it all means. 

Awakening to your Persona… it’s like, self-actualization, right? The ability to look straight at yourself without flinching -- to grab hold of the version of you that you’ve always repressed for the comfort of others and to _wrap_ yourself in it; to wear it like armor. That’s why it’s always so personal. His friends, they called on their Personas to defend themselves from their abusers, or to avenge the people they loved most. Ann summoned Carmen to save her own ass from a rapist fuck, and to avenge the girl she loved. Yusuke called on Goemon to help him muster the strength to defy the only family he’d ever known. Haru and Milady teamed up on her own  _ father _ , for fuck’s sake. Even Ryuji’s awakening was personal. Kamoshida took everything from him, and Captain Kidd stepped up to help him take it back. 

Akira, though… Akira’s reason was  _ Ryuji _ . 

Think about it. Before the two of them tripped into his Palace, Akira had never even  _ met _ Kamoshida. He’d barely even met Ryuji. Did they know each other’s names, before they were thrown into that cell together? God, what an impression he must have made: fearful and frantic and disbelieving, sweat-drenched and stinking with the vinegary tang of fear. 

Ryuji was awake for a few minutes before Akira came to. He’s never told Akira about that time: about the way he’d kicked at the bars till his bad leg swelled up like a blimp; or the way he broke down and sobbed when he realized that he’d never be strong enough to get them out. When Akira finally opened his eyes and Ryuji wasn’t alone anymore, he thought he might faint from the relief. 

He’d half-hoped that the transfer student would fall apart, too, forcing Ryuji to calm down and take charge. But Akira had just looked at him with all the calm, keen-eyed focus of a hawk eyeing a rabbit, and somehow, that was enough. Akira’s steady gaze turned all of Ryuji’s frenzied panic into vapor, and suddenly he could see straight again. 

(Until Shadow Kamoshida turned up and kicked the living shit out of him, of course. Hard to maintain your composure with impotent fury coursing through your veins; or with dull, blunt-force agony radiating from your sternum which, god, must be cracked by now, or if not, _definitely_ will be by the time that fucking armored stooge swings its absurd Final Fantasy-ass sword down on him again. Through it all, Kamoshida loomed over him, smirking like the whole thing was some sick game. He had the same cold, ugly look in his eyes that his dad used to wear when he told Ryuji to get the fuck out, because _grown-ups were_ _talking_. Except this time, Ryuji couldn’t just run away.)

“Get out of here,” he remembers muttering to the transfer student, who had just rushed an armored goon hard enough to let out a sound like a damned church bell. Of course that set Kamoshida off, leering and sneering and grandstanding about the other boy’s cowardice.  _ Some friend you are _ , he’d said, as though the transfer student owed Ryuji anything. 

“He’s not a friend,” Ryuji spat back, in the direction of Kamoshida’s feet. 

That’s where the dream always starts: with the metallic tang of blood on his lips and a dull heat radiating from the place where the shadow’s boot  _ crunched _ into his chest; peering up at Akira, who somehow, in spite of their circumstances, has managed to look slightly crestfallen at Ryuji’s words. 

“Run,” Ryuji mutters to him, or to the ground, or maybe he only thinks it. He can’t be sure -- can’t even hear himself think over the ringing in his ears. Kamoshida swings at him again, and his bad leg throbs a second before the bastard’s fist even makes contact, just from the smug, disinterested cruelty in those cold yellow eyes. 

Now he’s on the ground. How did he get here? Ryuji clutches dizzily at his head, watching the scene play out from a hundred miles away. He peers up just in time to see Kamoshida spit at him; to catch the bead of phlegm full in the face. 

Heat blooms in his chest. Clean, purifying anger fills him -- eclipses the pain, swallows the sun, makes his vision go red with hate. The heat of it threatens to burn him up from within, to sublimate his blood and roast his flesh and fry his skin to so much crisp crackling paper.

_ At least the transfer student will get away _ , he thinks distantly, as the king’s goons close in.  _ Kamoshida won’t get  _ everything _ he wants. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, not really. I was always going to end up like this. _

Until-- 

“Stop it,” Akira shouts. 

Kamoshida rounds on him, of course, bellowing threats and dripping venom. Ryuji doesn’t remember what he says, because something in the transfer student’s eyes has transfixed him. 

There is fear there, yes, a mirror of Ryuji’s own. There’s humiliation too, and even anger, a guttering candle in the light of the raging inferno that burns inside Ryuji. But there’s also something else: something like curiosity, or maybe wonder. There’s a wild, animal attention, as though the boy is listening to something that no one else can hear. 

Ryuji can see the whites all the way around the transfer student’s eyes. His irises are so dark that they swallow up his pupils, drowning them in twin pools of ink. 

One of Kamoshida’s goons is lifting Ryuji up now, bruising his collarbone in the process. It hurts, in a distant, not-particularly-pressing sort of way. Ryuji doesn’t care. He only has eyes for the transfer student, who seems to be  _ convulsing _ .  _ Are you okay _ , he wants to ask, except his mouth is full of blood and it dribbles down his chin when he parts his lips.

The transfer student is pouring sweat. He’s thrashing, too, straining against his captor’s grasp as though he’s finally come to grips with the situation, except that the pain in his eyes is mingled with something else. There’s something bright there, something feral: a savage kind of hunger. 

Akira’s thrashing stills, and he looks up. For all his terror, a thrill goes up Ryuji’s spine. All the fear is gone from the transfer student’s eyes. All that’s left is cold certainty.

“ _ Stop it _ ,” Akira says, quieter than before.  He’s not begging for mercy. It’s an order. 

Kamoshida bares his teeth. 

Ryuji should be scared for the other boy, and he is, sort of. But by all rights, as Kamoshida’s goons hoist the transfer student up by his throat, Akira should look trapped and afraid. With his head bowed the way it is, you might mistake him for one who has given up. But that strange, feral hunger is still curling off him like smoke. With his head low and his shoulders slouched, Akira looks like nothing more or less than a lioness, readying for the pounce. 

Force floods the room, blowing Ryuji’s hair back. He looks up just in time to see Akira’s eyes open wide --  _ his eyelashes are so long _ , he can’t help but notice,  _ like a doe’s _ . His vision fades for a moment as the transfer student struggles with something on his face, and Ryuji can see blood, and oh, god, after everything, is he about to watch this boy die? 

Then Akira looks up, and for one heart-stopping instant his eyes aren’t black at all, but bright yellow as an osprey’s. Ryuji has only a moment to feel a pulse of fear and of something new -- something warm and buttery uncurling in his belly -- before the transfer student bursts into flames.

Blue hellfire licks at his collarbone, surges down his arms, blackens the dingy stone overhead as something --  _ someone _ \-- rises out of him. Black chains clang against the bars, and armored thugs fly in all directions, and all the while Akira is grinning straight at him -- not at their captors, not at his new Persona, not even at Kamoshida but at  _ Ryuji _ . Akira’s wild, lusty triumph drills clear through Ryuji’s skin and into his soul, and Ryuji’s not sure what’s happening, except that the power has shifted; that something has changed in this room, and in Akira, and in himself, and-- 

And then he wakes up. 

What  _ is _ it about Akira’s awakening that he can’t get out of his head? Sure, it was traumatic. But Ryuji’s had his share of trauma. If his brain was going to relive some past humiliation, he’d think it would be the day his piece-of-shit dad broke his mom’s tailbone, or the day he awoke to Captain Kidd. It’s not as though Akira is the only friend he’s watched awaken to their Persona. Hell, Ann’s awakening was  _ way _ more fucked up. She was strapped to a cross, for fuck’s sake.

If he’s honest with himself, the dream’s not even a nightmare, really. He doesn’t wake up panting and frantic like he does when his dreams get really twisted. He wakes up  _ vibrating _ with adrenaline, with every muscle in his body flexed, salivating like he’s hungrier than he’s ever been in his entire life, and with his cock as hard as fucking granite. 

Then he usually makes himself a snack. 

_ What is my deal? _ he asks himself after waking, again, from the same god damned dream he’s had all week. Ryuji peers blearily at the clock. It’s 3:48 am. He’s got an exam tomorrow, but he was going to fail it anyway. May as well make the best of it.

Ryuji tucks his erection under his waistband before padding to the kitchen. His mom never would never get up at this hour, but why test fate? He turns on the rice cooker with one hand, running his fingers idly over the length of his cock with the other. 

It’s totally normal to wake up with a hard-on, of course, even from dreams that aren’t particularly sexy. Ryuji knows that. He wakes up hard in the morning after he dreams about  _ cereal _ , for fuck’s sake. So of course it’s nothing personal. It’s definitely not about Akira pinned against the wall of that dingy little cell, with sweat beading and pooling and slipping down the lines of his face like morning dew. 

He’d never seen anyone  _ feel _ so much as he did when Akira first called Arsene. At the time, of course, he had no fuckin’ idea what he was looking at. But anyone could see that it was intense -- intimate --  _ private _ , really. Afraid for his life as he was, Ryuji still knew he should look away, except that he wouldn’t have looked away for a billion trillion yen. 

Awakening takes a toll on the body. It’s painful -- confronting yourself always is -- but when it happened to Ryuji, he learned that it’s also  _ pleasurable _ . Awakening hurts  _ good _ , like peeling off a scab, or cumming. It’s excruciating, like fire in your blood, and it’s exhilarating, like fire in your blood. It’s raw and vulnerable and a little bit violating, but it’s also purest euphoria. It’s the cleanest high he’s ever felt: a quintuple-dose of adrenaline delivered straight to the heart.

Everyone thrashes and spasms and wails when they awake to their Persona, so why is it only Akira’s high, desperate mewling that he can’t get out of his head? Why is it only Akira’s straining, panting form that paints the dark behind Ryuji’s eyelids? Akira’s lean muscles taut with savage hunger, the thick cords of his biceps flexed to their breaking point; and Akira’s high whimpering deepening to raw, ragged moaning, an unconscious expulsion of hurt and fury and ferocity and desire. And the moment where Akira’s eyes finally snap open and, together as one, Akira and Arsene look  _ straight at Ryuji _ , straight through him and into his bloody beating heart. 

Ryuji’s cock bucks against his waistband, and he fails to suppress the small, barely-audible whine that hums from the back of his throat. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, slipping a hand into his shorts to squeeze at the length of his shaft. 

It’s just because Akira went first, probably. Ryuji had never seen anything like it. Even in the porn he watched, he’d never seen so much primal emotion and exertion and tension; had never seen anyone  _ grunt _ with pained pleasure as they squirmed, hips bucking, a cord of drool slipping past parted lips, gasping, panting,  _ panting _ \-- 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Ryuji says again, slightly louder. He swallows hard. He takes a breath, and lets it out. He takes another. 

The rice is ready, but it’s too dark to find a clean spoon. Ryuji scoops some out with his fingers instead, flipping a clump of it back and forth between his hands to keep from getting burned. He  _ doesn’t _ reach for his cock again. If the pressure of the counter against his groin sets fire to his belly, sending a low, tingling ache rippling from his core to the tips of his toes, that could hardly be considered his fault. Of course he needs to lean against something. He’s  _ tired _ . It’s the middle of the freakin night, for chrissake. 

The rice in his palm has gotten cold. Ryuji eats it anyway.

Ryuji might be dumb, but he’s not dumb enough to have a crush on Akira. He’s just -- tired, and horny, and eighteen years old, and maybe he’s got his wires crossed a little. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s  _ definitely _ nothing to act on. 

“Just eat your rice,” he mutters to himself, alone in the dark of his kitchen. “And -- _stop_ _ thinking. _ ”


End file.
